How education-technology startups are changing learning in India

Students get to decide what and how they want to learn, understand concepts better using digital aids, analyze their strengths and weaknesses, and have conversations with teachers.

Deepika Bhalla, a 22-year-old student in Lucknow, agonized over the neighbourhood coaching classes she attended to prepare for a bank examination. The tutor couldn’t afford to give her personal attention or guidance.

Bhalla’s solution was to go digital with a mobile app that allows her to get answers to specific questions whenever she wants. She’s hooked. Personalized learning has become possible thanks to a handful of technology entrepreneurs who set out to design educational models that could make learning student-led, with teachers being facilitators.

Students get to decide what and how they want to learn, understand concepts better using digital aids, analyze their strengths and weaknesses, and have conversations with teachers. Content is engineered for each student. And it’s the students who rate their teachers. This is as close you can get to the perfect bottom-up pyramid, if there was any. The millions of students flocking to education-technology startups such as Byju’s has drawn the attention of investors.

This is fuelling further development of data-driven education technologies, triggering fundamental changes in how school and college students as well as professionals seeking new skills are learning.

“When we were conceptualising (our Learning App) we realized it was easier to change the learning habit of students rather than the system itself. Basically, the product is made in such a way that they learn on their own,” said Byju Raveendran, founder of Byju’s.

The Bengaluru-based startup employs original content, graphics and videos to explain concepts, making learning contextual and visual. It leverages data to enable students understand what to learn, how to learn and how much to learn. The app has been downloaded by about 5.5 million students in more than 1,400 cities and towns. Byju’s is India’s most-funded ed-tech startup with $125 million (nearly Rs 840 crore) raised since March.

Last week, the foundation started by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan co-led a $50-million investment in the company.

Data quotient Data that ed-tech platforms have collected over the years are prompting constant improvements. Take Vedantu, which connects students and tutors online. Data showed them that many students regarded the interactive teaching done over video as a distraction.

They preferred virtual whiteboards and voice, which option students now have. “Even before launching we optimized a lot for video. But after launching, the data told us that people are really not looking forward to a video interaction… We wasted a little bit of time there. This was a classic case where we did more than what was required,” said chief executive Vamsi Krishna.

Based on data, Vedantu also recently started an ‘engagement quotient’ for teachers to inform them where they should improve. Nearly all ed-tech entrepreneurs have gained from data insights. The three big learnings that have been inculcated into these platforms thanks to the data are: chat-based interactions, video presentations and personalization. Gradeup, a Quora-like platform that Bhalla switched over to for her bank exam preparations, leverages data to make learning more personalised.

Based on the questions students post and attempt to solve, Gradeup builds individual profiles. If a student is good at fractions, the app infers she must be good at ratio and proportions as well. So the app will present her with questions of higher difficulty when attempting ratio and proportions.

“We are able to give students feedback based on the 200 million questions that are attempted every month,” said Shobhit Bhatnagar, cofounder of the year-old startup backed by Times Internet. Avagmah, an online distance learning platform, employs chat-based learning. “There are research assistants in the backend who are available to answer questions instantaneously,” said CEO Karthik KS.

Since most of its students are working professionals, Avagmah offers customized study schedules. “This led to an increase in consumption because the student was given a day-today schedule, which made it easier for them to follow and study,” said Karthik. Avagmah, co-promoted by startup factory Growth Story, was recently funded by Infosys cofounder Kris Gopalakrishnan and Atul Nishar, founder of Hexaware and Aptech.

Disrupting education All said and done, the education-technology industry is still nascent but could be setting the stage to disrupt learning. “What we have understood is that when you understand the concept, marks will come, but there is a long way to go in changing the habits of a lot more students,” said Byju. “There is a lot of scope before you can call ed-tech a revolution but we are on our way.”

Some of that revolution is being channeled through young teachers, several still in college themselves. At Hashlearn, a Uber-like platform for booking teachers for specific sessions, a majority of the teachers are students or recent graduates of premier colleges such as the IITs and AIIMS. Essentially, students who have just cleared exams and, importantly, can be awake late to answer questions.

“I have answered doubts as early as 4 am,” said Malay Krishna, a 22-year-old who recently graduated from IIT-Delhi. Similarly, all the teachers on Byju’s videos are young so the students can relate to them.

“We believe that the first step is to like the teacher. The teacher presenting is very important, conversational style… very young teachers. Students will relate to them in a friendly manner,” said Byju.

All these technology advancements have contributed to students getting bolder about what they want to learn, said Narayanan Ramaswamy, head-education at consultancy firm KPMG India. “Knowledge was earlier confined to classrooms and teachers. (Ed-tech startups) have turned learning on the head from a teacher-centric model to a learner-centric model. I won’t be surprised if they become full-blown online varsities,” said Ramaswamy.

“I see a large role for these early entrepreneurs in the transformed ecosystem we are going to live in tomorrow. Clearly, they are onto something that is going to be fundamentally disruptive.”

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